This may be one for Therion authors, Beat (PocketTopo) and Andrew (TopParser)

A strange spurious value in the attached top file causes therion to hang when trying to load the xvi file produced by topparser (have not tried the workflow where we import txt files produced by PocketTopo, although I have attached those txtx files).

Not sure how the bad value got into the top file?

-bad disto?  Seems reasonable as we occasionally get spurious numbers from our disto

-PocketTopo glitch?  Seems possible based on what I recall of the workflow in the cave as we were collecting data.

-user error due to accidentally deleting the distance in the data table? Quite likely, I am fairly blind in a cave when it comes to close work.

Anyway, sending these just in case it helps with more graceful error handling with similar bad data in future, and maybe will help users who have similar troubles.

You can see how it manifests in PocketTopo in the screenshot attached and below.  It is handled gracefully, but not much clue as to where the problem is.

The offending entry in the data table view appears to be normal-ish, maybe a zero missing.  I think I had just performed the ‘continue here’ function.  The bad line is highlighted blue.

You can see what seems to be the cause here in the exported ‘therion data file.  Maybe it is a bad value in top file causing this, or maybe this is what the export function in Xtherion and the conversion in topparser do with a null distance in the top file?

File 56-ConsciousTHERION.txt produced by Therion line 214

56.4                  180.00  0.00      2147483.648      >

File 56-ConsciousTEXT.txt produced by Therion line 272

    56.4                            0.00    0.00  [1]

File 56-Conscious.th produced by TopParser line 335

56.4      -           2147483.648      0.0        0.0       

I think topparser produces Therion files faithfully, but Therion drawing window hangs when trying to load the xvi produced.

Anyway, when I added a 0.0 value to the missing distance in the PocketTopo file and reprocessed everything, all is now as it should be and the world is a better place.

How to make it easier in the future?

PockeTopo to warn on export if there appears to be bad or missing data?

Therion and TopParser to replace null values with zero??

Bruce